No, I'm not about to write about another idiotic doomsday prediction. To be honest, I have no patience for those, except for a few of the truly clever jokes about the bizarrely hilarious Mayan scenarios that my Twitter pals concocted.

Instead, here's part of an editorial from the L.A. Times that hit home. If America doesn't take these genuinely scary-- and real-- possibilities seriously, then our priorities are more screwed up than I thought:

[D]espite our apparent obsession with global catastrophe, we're surprisingly reluctant to confront the complications of actual, documented threats to our planet. Science and observation seem to indicate that real planetary crises will come more quietly and slowly but just as sadly — and perhaps more so because by that time we will have had years, if not decades, of legitimate warning. The effects of climate change may not be as dramatic as the reappearance of Satan on Earth, but they are a lot more imminent. Scientists around the planet have urged political leaders to counter the threat with a variety of conservation measures, some of which we have pursued, some of which we've ignored. Meanwhile, global temperatures are already up, ice masses are melting, polar bears are being stranded on diminishing frozen habitats.

Nuclear annihilation, which would happen a lot faster and with a more cinematic bang, continues to be a possibility as more countries seek nuclear weapons or the material to make them. Reining in nuclear proliferation — and controlling those weapons that already exist — is complicated and controversial but surely worth fighting for.

After I read that, I came across an article about a completely unrelated subject, the Benghazi hearings, again in the L.A. Times:

[W]ith a number of GOP lawmakers not showing up for the hearings, it appeared that an issue that has been a major focus of conservatives' efforts since fall may be losing steam. [...]

The Republicans rejected arguments by administration officials and their Democratic supporters that part of the problem was the tight budget for diplomatic security, which House Republicans reduced last year. They called instead for a shift of money from lower-priority items.

At an afternoon hearing, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), said the problem was "misplaced priorities." She said the department was "lavishing" money on projects such as ... efforts to slow climate change.

Yes, climate change is now a "misplaced priority, a lower-priority item." At least according to some House Republicans. Oh those clever conservatives, they're too smart for us, because they'd never fall for hoaxy bunk like that. But I wonder how many of them secretly fell for all that end of the world twaddle.